Four Wings of a Butterfly
by alpha aquarii
Summary: Aika comes back for a day, to say goodbye. Yoshino&Mahiro&Hakaze&Aika.


"Are you sure?"

Aika taps a finger to her lips. Above them, the November stars have already begun to stray from summer's pull, wandering away without so much as a goodbye. The Mage of Exodus, Hakaze thinks, means to exit with more closure. "I can't say. But seeing as you were able to come here without much problem, I should be able to translocate myself with even greater accuracy and precision, perhaps without even the need for a focal point existing in both times. I could travel forward to see those two for perhaps a day, then send myself back here in time to die."

Secretly, though it rends apart all logic, Hakaze hopes that she'll stay with them in the future, although what she says is, "But if anything goes wrong, you could cause a paradox."

"Don't worry, princess. I have the power of Exodus, remember? Disorder is my domain." Aika steps forth, and Hakaze's eyes widen as she catches the scent of lilacs and smoke on the girl. Suddenly she's all too aware of the way Aika's skirt brushes against hers as the other mage leans a hand against her shoulder. "Shall we go?"

_four wings of a _**_butterfly_**

They tumble into a year later, all knobbly arms and tangled legs, and Hakaze glimpses bones on the other girl's body that she's never seen on herself. When they sit up, Aika brushes back her long hair to reveal pert breasts goosefleshed with chill, and studies Hakaze. Her gaze trails over Hakaze like a feather, sweeping her at the clavicle, over her stomach, to the gap between her thighs.

"Mahiro did always complain that I was… lacking, so Yoshino-san must be glad to have you around."

"Wha—"

"Oh, don't worry about it." The younger girl stands, hipbones peeking through nearly translucent flesh. "I know; you don't have to say anything. I do hope my being here won't complicate things too much."

_Too late_, Hakaze thinks. She turns her attention to the dresses hanging on the wall. She'd briefed the rest of the team already about Aika's visit with instructions to lay out clothes. Neither Mahiro nor Yoshino could bear to go through Aika's old things, so the dress laid out for her is a new one, a gauzy purple sundress with a modest cut. Aika's slim form glimmers through the diaphanous material regardless, and Hakaze is made too aware of the girlishness of her yellow dress in comparison.

When they're dressed, she leads Aika to the living room. The others are nowhere to be seen, just as she'd requested; this is to be a farewell, not a spectacle. She opens the door, stepping aside for Aika to enter first. The girl graces her with a serene tilt of the lips that stirs something nameless in Hakaze. The two of them, knowing a power beyond reason and absurdity, have no need to exchange words in moments like these. Perhaps that explains her instinctual attraction to the girl, from the rim of her collarbone to the slender curves of her ankles.

"Aika-chan!"

"Aika…"

Caught up in these musings, she misses the first few seconds of Yoshino and Mahiro's reactions. When she looks up, she sees Yoshino nearly across the room in a half-realized embrace. But he lingers back with a guilty glance in Mahiro's direction, and her heart lurches again. Mahiro stands behind, hands trembling at his sides, as if still unable to process the sight before him. At that moment Hakaze sees Aika as they must, a slight spectre of a girl summoned from memory and magic, and feels a commensurate awe. Quietly, she closes the door behind her as she leaves them to their reunion.

**v**

The first thing Yoshino does is scramble away to the bar with some excuse to make coffee, leaving Aika alone with her brother. "Honestly, he's such a coward," she sighs, smoothing her dress over her thighs.

Mahiro snorts. "What, did you expect the end of the world to change him?" Never at ease around her anyways, he's now sitting as far away from her on the same side of the couch as possible, leaning against the armrest while she remains perched in the middle.

Gently, she asks, "Aren't you mad? You know about us, now."

His eyebrow twitches at 'us,' but that's all. She didn't recall that resignation in him before. Was this what her death would do—had done? "Being mad would be pointless. It all happened in the past anyways."

"Not for me. Right now, it's still the present for me," she whispers, leaning toward him, "and you can still change things."

The hem of her dress pulses against his knee. Mahiro, brother, jealous lover; she's sorry, but not, because if this is the last time she'll see him, there ought not to be secrets between them.

When he reaches for her, his fingers are trembling. He doesn't quite make it to her jaw before he snatches his hand back, grunting and turning away.

Not drawing back, she asks, "Were you about to do something unbrotherly?"

"And what if I was?"

"Well then… I might have done something unsisterly."

They stare at each other, expressions level and knees touching, until the footsteps near the door alerts them to Yoshino's presence. Aika doesn't shift back to the middle of the couch, but turns forward to break their slight contact.

The coffee in the three cups shivers as Yoshino places the tray down on the table. Mahiro glares at them dourly. "Want me to leave? I'm sure you two have a lot to… talk… about."

"No!" It's said too quickly, the guilt too obvious. Yoshino thumbs his sleeve, tugging at the button by his wrist. "No, you should stay."

"I agree. I will only be here until tomorrow, after all." Yoshino's brow crinkles at this. When he sits, she touches a hand fondly to the pins in his hair. "You've kept these."

"Of course."

She giggles, a finger crooked at her lips. "Pardon me for being a little surprised. With the princess around, I wasn't sure you'd still want to keep a dead girl's souvenirs."

"You aren't dead right now!"

Even Mahiro beside her starts at Yoshino's shouted words. She watches the way Yoshino's brows contort, and thinks: he wasn't like this before. When he grasps her shoulders, for a moment there's an alien roughness to him.

"You don't have to go back. You can stay here with us, forever, alive, if you want to. You have the power to bend reality to your will; you could stay alive, if only you wanted to! I don't care if you're the Mage of Exodus, because Aika-chan, you _died_, and I'm not going to watch you go back there to do it again!"

She fills her hands with his hair, pulling the familiar strands and marveling at the weight she's forced him to carry. "I'm sorry, Yoshino-san. But you're the one with the power to save the world, now. By now, I've already done my part."

"It's so selfish, Aika-chan," he whispers, and for a moment she wonders if it was wise to come back at all, because the sound of his voice still carries forbidden keys to her heart.

But then: "Yoshino," Mahiro growls, "get your hands off my sister." He leans over her to push Yoshino away, and she comes back to herself, settling her freed hands on her lap. "Aika, it's unnatural for you to be here," he says with customary bluntness. "I don't know what to say to you, but we're going to save this world because of you."

Yoshino gives a little helpless laugh and settles back against the couch. "I guess I should be glad that you even thought to come say goodbye."

"I admit, that was more for my benefit than yours." Selfish she is; she could have written them a goodbye letter or taped a video, but this—bittersweet—will be her final memory instead. "But I'm glad to see you two. You've taken care of each other, in my absence."

It pleases her to see the way Mahiro pointedly looks away and the way Yoshino colors. She scrunches her hands in her dress, suddenly reminded of years long gone and their accompanying memories of sunflowers and summer stars; she laughs, and because the princess isn't here, she directs her fond gaze to their untouched coffee instead.

**v**

"You didn't need to go away," Yoshino says as Hakaze slips back into the room. It's night now, and they've had dinner without her.

"I thought I'd give you some privacy."

"Why? You know everything that's between us as well as we do," Mahiro grumbles.

"My brother's right. You're as much a part of this story as we are, princess." Yoshino can feel the slight drift of Aika's dress as she shifts on the couch beside him. All this time between them has transformed the soft lilt of her voice from a subtle joy to an inevitable melancholy.

As Hakaze sits next to Mahiro, they descend into uncomfortable silence. The couches are too far apart, and that's a tragedy in itself. He clears his throat. "Do you guys want to go… out?"

"Yes. It might be nice to take a walk," Aika murmurs. "I must admit I'm curious to see how the world has changed."

He helps her on with a borrowed pea coat from Hakaze, and is acutely aware of the other two watching them. Sometimes he still can't quite believe that things are so tangled, but isn't that what this is supposed to be, a way to straighten them out?

When they've stepped outside, aimlessly wandering about the city, Aika strides forth to talk with Hakaze, leaving Yoshino to fall back with Mahiro. "Are you all right?" he can't help but ask his friend.

Mahiro blows out a long breath, his hands burrowed in his pockets. "Well, shouldn't I ask you the same thing?"

"It doesn't mean you get to avoid the question," he mutters.

"But you're going to avoid it anyway," Mahiro answers with a flippant shrug, "so why bother asking?"

They lapse into silence then, and Yoshino finds himself grateful for this most normal of exchanges, because it means that even if Mahiro is jealous, or quietly nursing a suffering he can't even fathom, at least things will stay the same between them. Aika won't rip them apart. Sometimes he's not quite ready to admit to himself how much that means.

**v**

Mahiro isn't surprised when they wend their way through the city to end up by the water's edge, under a bridge. The place holds no connotations to him, of course, but Yoshino's alluded to more than he would like to dwell on of his and Aika's conversations there, and Hakaze had mentioned that this is where she and his sister had talked and almost come to blows.

"It's the same," Aika is saying, spreading her arms. "Of course, I could hardly expect one year to effect significant change. Still, it feels strange to know that one year ago, I was alive in this very spot."

"Please," Yoshino murmurs, "can we not keep talking about that?"

"What will denial do?" Hakaze stands with her hand on her hip. "She's here to say goodbye, and there's no point pretending we're here for any other reason."

"Isn't there? Doesn't her just being here negate everything we know of what happened in the past?"

Mahiro lets them argue, because his eyes are on Aika and have been since she got here, as she wanders toward the riverbank. Yoshino and Hakaze's chatter falls away, and not just from his ears; the very air goes quiet as all three of them watch Aika step out of her sandals onto the grass. Moonlight ghosts through her dress as if passing through a prism.

The night is unseasonably warm. Aika toes the water, then steps in just far enough to cover her ankles, and the wind threading through her hair makes Mahiro ache inside. He, Yoshino, and Hakaze watch her, and it's painfully acute then, how all of them long for her, a threefold symmetry of desire that goes beyond friendship or love or family—it's in the air, in fate, maybe even in their souls. She's beautiful and ethereal and his sister, and even if he's possessed of that particular wayward passion, can they blame him?

"Aika," Mahiro gasps, a strangled groan, and he's the first to fold forward, catching her around the waist from behind in a touch he'd restrained for years, _years_. The river sloshes around his feet, soaking his shoes, but he barely feels it as she turns into him, her body so deceptively small against his.

"My, my," she murmurs, the flush in her cheeks evident even in the moonlight. "And here I thought you'd never work up the courage."

She presses forward, and Mahiro stumbles as his heel catches on a clump of dirt, but soft hands steady him from behind. Not Yoshino's hands.

Hakaze pulls them back from the water's edge, and Mahiro finds his arm looping over her shoulders too. She brought Aika to him, after all. Her voice shivers where it presses close to Mahiro's ear. "Aika, you don't have to do this. You haven't seen what your death's done to them. Don't leave them… or me."

He can feel the press of Aika's waist against his when she turns to Hakaze, pressing her lips to the mage's forehead. "You're going to take good care of them for me, princess. I just know it."

Then Aika lifts her head from where it rests sandwiched between their arms, and calls in a high, clear voice, "What are you standing there for, Yoshino-san?"

They barely manage to stagger a few feet up the hill—neither he nor Hakaze is willing to let Aika out of their arms, and she doesn't try to beg release—before Yoshino fairly collides into them. Four's too many; they fall to the grass; three is the number of stability, but they are one more than that, and so they fall—or perhaps fly, on wings heralding something better than mere balance.

He can never be mad at Yoshino, he thinks, as he finds his mouth buried in his friend's hair, his free hand wheeling through someone else's—maybe Aika's, maybe Hakaze's. Secrets there may have been, but under the starred sky, right now he knows this is as honest as all four of them have ever, will ever be. Soon all movement ceases and they simply lie there, tangled helplessly and gladly in each other, sinking under the weight of a grief both already met and now freshly anticipated.

**v**

**v**

**v**

"Don't forget, you have a long battle in front of you."

Hakaze lingers by the door as Aika faces the two boys. She cups a hand to Yoshino's cheek, running two fingers down to his chin, and Hakaze averts her eyes. To Mahiro she gives a kiss on the cheek. Hakaze can't hear their murmured last words.

When Aika skips over to her, the sun flashing through her dress reminds Hakaze of the flirtatious winking of the sea when she had been on that island. "Will you guide me back, princess?" She takes Hakaze's hand.

They step out together. When they reach the room where the time travel is to happen, Aika turns and grasps her other hand as well. "Treat Yoshino-san well, princess. He'll come around. I think this gave him the closure he needed."

"Aika… thank you." She has to swallow against the blade scraping her throat.

In response, Aika folds her arms around Hakaze in a delicate embrace. Hakaze weaves fingers through her chestnut hair, and feels the fabric of their dresses kiss. Then Aika pulls back, standing flush against the wall and preparing to recite the incantation.

"I've taken more than I was supposed to. I was only supposed to have a few hours left, but I changed the script and took a whole day instead. Do you think that makes me as selfish as Yoshino-san seems to think?"

Tears come to Hakaze's eyes as she watches the other mage disappear backwards into time. Though Hakaze doesn't answer, Aika still smiles at her before her dress crumples, empty, to the floor. She's crying for this girl, this girl who has gone from stranger to rival to equal—to—to—

—and how strange, she can't seem to find the right words, because perhaps there will never be any right way to describe this anomaly in their tale named Fuwa Aika.

**vvv**


End file.
